Geothermal’s Top 10 Takeaways

September 06, 2017

If you don’t know anything else about geothermal heating and cooling, know this – especially if you’re planning on redoing your current Southwest Michigan home’s HVAC system or at a loss for what to install in the new home you’re building:

Geothermal HVAC systems are widely considered the most environmentally friendly you can buy. Their relatively simple technology harnesses subterranean temperatures to supply your Southwest Michigan home with winter heat and summer cooling. Thus, your home and the earth are always in sync, bonded together in a distinctive – and distinctively compatible – home-earth symbiosis. Sound a trifle too pompous? All it means is that, with geothermal heating and cooling, your home isn’t destroying the natural order of things. Instead, it’s becoming a “nicer” part of the environment.

Geothermal HVAC systems pass muster as “renewable energy technology.” True, they run off of electricity. But they don’t demand much of it for all the advantages you get. Just one unit of electricity can transport up to five units of natural heating or cooling from the earth to your home.

Geothermal HVAC systems are far more efficient than solar (photovoltaic) or wind power systems. In general, solar and wind technologies, whatever the pull of their “renewability,” eat four times more kilowatt-hours of electricity per dollar spent than geothermal systems.

Geothermal HVAC systems won’t take up as much of your yard as you might fear. Don’t have much yard space to begin with? No bombshell there: most home lots in Southwest Michigan and elsewhere anymore occupy a fairly limited the polyethylene piping used for the geothermal earth loops doesn’t have to be buried horizontally. It can be dug in vertically and run as deep as 100 to 400 feet. Hardly any above-ground surface is called for in any case, whether vertical, horizontal, open (well water), or pond loops are installed. Result? You can keep your little patch of paradise a whole lot greener.

Geothermal HVAC systems are unbelievably quiet. Every element of a geothermal system is designed and engineered to run significantly quieter than ordinary gas furnaces, heat pumps, or air conditioners. More reassuring still, there’s no outside unit, so you and your neighbors areen’t troubled by fans, belts, and compressors whirring, whining, and clattering away at all hours!

Geothermal HVAC systems are durable heating and cooling solutions, designed and engineered to last for generations. Contemporary geothermal technology, manufacturing guidelines, and installation procedures assure ground loops of impressive longevity and heat-exchange equipment that will keep working impeccably for decades. It helps, certainly, that the heat-exchange equipment is protected indoors. At least, when it does ultimately need repairing or replacing, it’s not likely that you’ll be redoing the ground, well, or pond loops along with it. So replacement costs can be kept to a minimum.

Geothermal HVAC systems don’t require much maintenance at all. The earth loops, as mentioned, are designed to hold up for generations, and when appropriately buried, will do so without any need for intervention. Fans, compressors, and pumps, kept safe indoors from weather extremes, need only sporadic scrutiny as well as periodic filter changes and a coil cleaning once a year.

Geothermal HVAC systems are as adept at cooling as they are at heating. The old notion that geothermal HVAC systems don’t cool as well as they heat has been pretty much buried by steady advances in the manufacture of geothermal technology.

Geothermal HVAC systems can be set up to multitask. Very well, so you’ve chosen to heat your home’s water geothermally. But can a geothermal system provide ambient heat for your home also? And what if you have a swimming pool? Don’t fret. Today’s systems can handle it all and handle it all at once, with no favoring of one task over another.

Geothermal HVAC systems are becoming increasingly affordable – even when not subsidized by federal and local tax incentives. Congress has yet to bring back federal tax credits for geothermal heating and cooling that lapsed December 31, 2016. Nevertheless, a number of factors – material and technological enhancements, new installation practices, and more competition in the marketplace, for the most part – are helping to bring geothermal solutions more in line with the cost of more run-of-the-mill heating and cooling methods.

Talk with the geothermal specialists at WaterFurnace Michiana today. They’ll explain in detail the benefits of geothermal heating and cooling so you can make the right decision for your Southwest Michigan home.